There was a good chance that going to the George Floyd march in Houston was a bad idea. When I first heard about the George Floyd video, I couldn’t watch the entire clip. It literally made me sick to my stomach. It was made even worse because his murderer wore the blue uniform of the police, who are meant to protect and serve the public.
My decision to attend the June 2, 2020, march was easy for me, but most of my senior staff were either uncomfortable or downright opposed to it. They worried that an outcome of the trip would be headlines like “Republican Congressman Will Hurd Part of Protest that Killed People and Damaged Property.”
It’s true that some rioting and looting had occurred around the country at marches. None of that was justified. But I wanted to show my support to the family of George Floyd. When a large community deals with tragedy, it must grieve and heal together.
My older sister Liz, my friend Lynlie Wallace, and three staffers came along. As we marched, people chanted social justice slogans, but nobody was derogatory or mean. Tens of thousands of folks were there—the official count was north of sixty thousand. The interactions between the marchers and the police were pleasant and kind. The march was peaceful and a success.
At one point, Liz commented to me that she thought there were as many non-Black people marching as Black folks. It was invigorating to be with so many people from all walks of life committed to the same cause—to end the unnecessary deaths of Black folks in police custody. It felt as if a majority of Americans were finally understanding the realities of systemic racism in American society.
The country was having a long-overdue reckoning with issues like bigotry and hate across the board, including unjust police violence that has long marred this experiment called America. The public calls for social justice following George Floyd’s murder were unique in their size and scope. I hadn’t seen this type of universal outrage during my time in Congress, and I thought the outrage would create an environment to get something done legislatively on the issue of police violence.
But, getting legislation signed into law that would have improved the standard of policing across the country was made unnecessarily complex by far-left Democrats’ demands to defund or even abolish the police. When such an extreme position gets into the public debate, it prevents nuance and thoughtfulness from ruling the day. People involved in the debate become scared to say anything other than voicing a full-throated rebuke of the extreme point of view for fear of any other position becoming viewed as acceptance of the extreme.
However, Republicans can’t use the extremism of the far left as an excuse to stand on the sidelines on issues of social justice, especially since many Americans think the entire Republican Party is a bunch of bigots that condone racism, misogyny, and homophobia. Millions of Republicans, the overwhelming super majority, absolutely do not hold these beliefs. We believe, like those who created the party in the mid-1800s, in equal opportunity for everyone.
The Republican Party was officially created in 1856 from the efforts of anti-slavery proponents from the two major parties at the time, the Whigs and the Democrats. They formed a new party in opposition to the successful passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which increased the territory within the United States where slavery would be permitted. Abraham Lincoln, who put this country on the long path toward equality, was the first GOP president. To this day, my dad—who lived through Jim Crow and has experienced brutal racism—is a lifelong Republican “because Lincoln freed us.”
Republicans can’t deny that people affiliated with our party, including former president Trump, have made intolerant, racist comments that give legitimacy to hateful ideologies like white supremacy. We also can’t deny the legacy of the “Southern strategy,” courting Southern white voters by stoking racial fears, begun by former Arizona senator Barry Goldwater in 1964 when he was the Republican nominee for president, and then perfected by President Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972. In current times, being afraid to stand up to white nationalists for fear of losing a Republican primary is not a valid excuse to avoid rebuking racist rhetoric, behavior, and policy.
The way to achieve electoral success is to make sure the Republican Party looks like America by being a party based on the values with which we began—equal opportunity for everyone—and showing up in communities that have never seen us and listening to their concerns and offering attainable solutions.
After Floyd’s murder, I was the first Republican official to issue a statement condemning his horrific killing, and I was one of the few Republicans who showed up at a protest of his murder. Reporters asked me if I was doing this because I was the only Black Republican in the House. That wasn’t it at all. I was speaking out for my dad, my mom, my family, and my community. I wanted to show solidarity with Black America. I wanted to explain it was okay to be simultaneously outraged by a Black man being murdered in police custody, thankful that law enforcement puts themselves in harm’s way to enable our First Amendment rights, and pissed off that criminals are treading on American values by looting and killing police officers. These emotions aren’t mutually exclusive.
My father, Bob, now eighty-nine years old, grew up in Marshall, Texas, just over the state line from Louisiana in East Texas. Within the state, East Texas was the region with the most recorded lynchings and the most members of the Ku Klux Klan. It embodied the Jim Crow South.
At a time when Black men in Marshall were basically limited to becoming a waiter or a bus boy, my dad managed to graduate from college. In the early 1950s, he was one of the first Black salesmen for the American Tobacco Company, responsible for selling Lucky Strikes to gas stations and small grocery stores. To make a successful sale, my dad had to get behind the counter of the store to see what cigarette merchandise was there and figure out what the attendant manning the store needed.
When he was on sales calls, he would pull up to an account in a company car, wearing a freshly pressed suit. Right before he walked through the door of the business, he looked up at the sky; he imagined the face of the guy he was about to talk to. He’d tell that guy, “Today is your lucky day.”
He did this even though he knew, as soon as he walked in the store, the attendant would curse at him, call him the N-word, and demand that he leave because of the color of his skin. But my dad knew he could convince the guy to let him behind the counter. And by the end of the visit, the attendant would be shaking my dad’s hand and asking when he would be back. My pops said the secret to his success was to have a PMA—a Positive Mental Attitude.
When we were growing up, we talked a lot in our family about maintaining a PMA. It’s an attitude I keep even today. But I can’t imagine the determination it took for my dad to walk into those gas stations and grocery stores day after day, week after week, year after year, confront the racism and hostility he experienced, and still maintain his PMA. Just like I can’t imagine what it felt like for my mom to deal with those real estate agents who lied to her face every weekend while she kept losing out on a home for her family because of the skin color of the person with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life.
Growing up in San Antonio, I experienced remnants of this bigotry. As a teenager, I’d go into stores and shopkeepers wouldn’t want a young Black kid in their place of business so they’d call me the N-word and tell me to get out. Non-Black fathers of girls I dated tried to persuade their daughters not to date me because of my race. When I was doing recruiting for Texas A&M while a student there, I witnessed high school counselors discourage kids of color from applying to preeminent universities because they wouldn’t “fit in.”
I remember learning to drive at fifteen, and my dad giving me “The Talk”—not the one about the birds and the bees but the talk about what it means to be a Black man being pulled over by the police. He taught me that if I ever got pulled over by the police, I was to turn on the light in the car, roll down my window, and put my hands on the window seal so the police could see them. He instructed me not to make any movements unless I told the officer and received consent.
Today’s Black parents still have to have The Talk with their kids. Some folks—exclusively White men—have told me they give their daughters similar advice. But I always point out that they were telling their daughters to do this so they would stay calm when interacting with the police. Black parents are trying to protect their children from getting killed by the police.
Here’s the reality: communities of color, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, and the Asian American community (especially during COVID-19)—have been hit hard by hate crimes. While I was serving in Congress, hate-crime violence hit a sixteen-year high, according to the FBI. Mass shootings targeted the LGBTQ community at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando; Black parishioners at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina; and Latinos at a Walmart in El Paso.
The entire country was sickened by acts like these, but Republicans were portrayed as being unsympathetic to these vulnerable groups suffering from these calamities. This portrayal will continue until Republican deeds match Republican rhetoric.
I shouldn’t have been only one of a few Republicans who voted in May 2019 in favor of the Equality Act, a sweeping bill that would have banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 across important areas of life like housing, employment, and credit. Many of my colleagues opposed this. Why? Because they were worried about dudes playing women’s sports, even though all major athletic conferences had already taken steps to address this situation. The other argument for opposing the Equality Act was that it didn’t protect the freedom of religion. As a Christian, I’ve been to a bunch of different churches. I have lived in countries where the dominant religion was Islam or Hinduism, and I don’t know of any faith that says it’s okay to discriminate against anybody. They all teach to love one another.
I had many constituents upset with me over my LGBTQ antidiscrimination vote. That came with the territory, but my job was to do what my dad taught me—“be honest and do the right thing.” Whenever I encountered an individual upset with this vote, I would think about my uncle Steve. Uncle Steve gave me my first computer. While he was alive, I never knew he wasn’t my biological uncle. He was the longtime partner of my mom’s actual uncle, Lester.
Uncle Steve, a Navy veteran, moved from California to San Antonio after Uncle Lester died. I was young when this happened and never really knew Uncle Lester, but Uncle Steve was a cool guy, and we were all close to him. In my house, there was a lot of loose language, mostly by my dad, but the one word we were absolutely never allowed to use was the f-word—the one that rhymes with bag (I can’t even write the word because I’m worried my dad will read this and drive to my house and give me an open-handed slap to the mouth). I’m sure my dad’s strict policy was because of my uncles Lester and Steve. They were the first ones to welcome my dad into my mom’s family with open arms.
The vote on the Equality Act wasn’t the only time I was one of the handful of Republicans standing up for the principle that started our party. Another time was in August 2017, when I was sitting in a chilly, darkened TV studio in San Antonio, waiting for the camera light to blink on so I could discuss the latest antics of North Korean Leader Kim Jong-Un with Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s The Situation Room.
A few days prior, a white supremacist had driven into a peaceful group of marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia, protesting the far-right rally that had invaded their quiet city on that August weekend. The driver had killed a young woman.
As I was about to go on the air, President Trump had just said at a press conference that there were “very fine people on both sides.”
I heard the remarks in my earpiece, and my reaction was instant revulsion. He had just called a bunch of white supremacist terrorists “very fine people.”
“Congressman Hurd,” Wolf asked as I went on the air. “You are a Republican member of the House of Representatives, but, more important, as an American, are you proud of the way the president of the United States handled this situation today?”
Instantly I thought of my dad’s advice—“be honest and do the right thing.”
“You know,” I said into the camera, “if there’s any kids watching the show—racism, bigotry, anti-Semitism, it’s not okay. It’s not okay. You can’t support it in any fashion.”
Speaking with increasing urgency, I talked about the bigotry my mom and dad had faced while trying to find a home for their family. I demanded that President Trump apologize.
“Racism, bigotry, anti-Semitism of any form is unacceptable,” I told the CNN audience. “And the leader of the free world should be unambiguous about that.”
And I added that, by the way, “if you’re showing up to a Klan rally, you’re probably a racist or a bigot.”
The thing is, violent white supremacy meets the very definition of terrorism: it’s politically motivated violence against noncombatants. President Trump should have known that. In 2020, his Department of Homeland Security warned that violent white supremacy was the “most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland,” and that white supremacists were the most deadly among domestic terrorists in recent years.
White supremacists were responsible for what transpired in Charlottesville. They were responsible for the plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan in 2020. And a white supremacist was responsible for the August 2019 shooting spree at an El Paso Walmart that left twenty-three people dead and twenty-three more wounded—the deadliest attack on Latinos in modern American history.
I spoke at a memorial vigil for the El Paso victims and tried to make everyone’s heart a little less heavy. I said, “El Paso, we are telling the rest of the world, that if you come into our community and try to scare us, we will not cower. If you try to come into our community and spread hate, we will respond with love.”
That’s not to say that Republican leaders never get it right. And it certainly doesn’t mean that Democrats get it right more often. Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy rightfully kicked Rep. Steven King off his committee assignments in January 2019 after King questioned why white supremacy is considered offensive. But just a few months later, after Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar made anti-Semitic comments, House Democratic leaders pushed through a watered-down resolution vaguely condemning “anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, and other forms of bigotry” without actually naming her.
To be sure, plenty of Republicans condemned President Trump’s repulsive Access Hollywood remarks (“grab ’em by the p***y”) when they came to light in October 2016, and I was one of the handful of Texas Republican leaders to do so. I called Trump’s remarks “utterly sickening and repulsive” and urged him to “step aside for a true conservative.”
The long, hard process of removing the final vestiges of systemic racism, misogyny, and bigotry from our country to ensure our country actually reflects the revolutionary ideas in our founding documents starts with the words we use. It’s okay to say the words black lives matter and agree with the concept while disagreeing with some of the tactics by the organization with the same name. You can be heterosexual and support the LGBTQ community. And, fellas, you should be comfortable with your wife, girlfriend, or sister making as much money as you or more.
The party that believes in freedom must fight for all citizens to have equal opportunity to access goods and services, economic resources, legal and political rights, and the decision-making that governs their lives. My parents didn’t get to live in the neighborhoods with the best schools. Transgender kids in school don’t drink water all day so that they don’t have to go to a restroom. Women still get paid a little over 80 percent of what men make.
When a Republican is seen as a bigot, that affects all of us. If people don’t like us, then they won’t listen to our ideas. And we have better ideas. If we change our attitude, we change our behavior. When our behavior changes, so will our results. We can prepare the battlespace to win the competition of ideas by giving ourselves an opportunity to be heard. But if we play our cards right and get this chance, we can’t throw it away by doing what we have been doing for the last twenty years.